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October 26, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Lance Armistead
Given the body of research in the area of being raised bilingually, why are so many child “experts” (i.e. doctors, teachers, counselors) still in the dark about bilingualism? What is causing the lag between the new information coming out and it actually reaching these people. Are they simply ignorant, or do they think the research supporting bilingualism is flawed? It seems that with their position of power to influence so many parents and children, these are the people who should be the most educated about these types of issues. Where is the breakdown occurring?
October 28, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Anastasia Sorokina
Lance,
I think that the issue goes back to the law and regulations. It takes a while for the new idea to come to life in actual medical or educational practice. Older doctors and teachers are not aware of the new research, because they completed the training long time ago.
I am taking a class on L1 and L2 acquisition with teachers. I was very surprised how conservative and “backward” their thinking is. Maybe, it has to do with the region – South is a conservative place.
Anastasia
October 30, 2011 at 11:59 am
Wan-Chen Lee
Hi Lance:
I agree with you. When I read about journal article, I was wondering why these chile “esperts” still don’t have positive infouence on parents or other people. In the society, these experts, “doctors, teachers, and counselors,” should be more aware of these supportive bilingaul research becuase of their social status. Howevet, it seems that sometimes they hardly can catch up with the dramatice changing speed. I think that the government should have similar conference to educate these experts or government officers should have a bilingual education team to provide these expert advise.
October 30, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Hyun Hee Kim
I loved your expression “experts still in the dark” Well, I guess this is not uncommon in other areas. For example, why are we, normal people (?), relying on pop culture to get reliable information on nutrition or medicine? Why is it so expensive to have access for data base? If the academic sources too hard to understand, how do we link the gap, we you said? How do we (or bigger sources) link the gap between reliable texts and “normal parents” who wanted to improve their children’s education?
October 27, 2011 at 8:43 pm
yanjinli
Give the fact that all 24 families participated in the study are relatively highly educated compared to the average educational level of northeast areas, it is less reliable to draw a conclusion without taking this fact into consideration. Though all the 24 families exhibited their enthusiasm and determination of raising their children to be bilinguals, it is impossible to overgeneralize their attitude into the whole middle and upper class families and assume it is a major concern among those families, because all the families involved in this study obviously held an strong interest on educating their children to be bilinguals but it is not an evidence of similar interest in a whole socioeconomic class.
For another thing, those relatively highly educated parents tend to be more rational and sensitive to professional publications and researches, thus they read literature on this field and make references. For those less educated parents, nevertheless, it must be more difficult to persuade them to believe the beliefs and advantages of being bilinguals, which is our duty waiting to be accomplished.
October 30, 2011 at 1:03 am
Tiantian Guo
I agree with you! Though they have interest in educating their children to be bilinguals, I also have questions about the level of their interest and efforts. They tend to get random sources from public discource or private networks, and personal beliefs. I think they haven’t been very serious about bilingualsim or they took it for granted. Thus they often have inappropriate attitudes towards child’s bilingual development, that would be to expect too much too soon.
October 28, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Anastasia Sorokina
I was pleasantly surprised that bilingual upbringing is no longer associated with elite class, but becomes a common practice for middle class as well. However, I think that parents who are not well prepared or educated on the issue, may harm their child. For example, I know of some instances how parents speak artificial languages to their children for research purposes. I guess, my question is the following – what would be the best way to reach the masses about challenges and benefits of bilingual upbringing?
October 29, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Caleb
Ever notice how cutting edge research in the areas of life most important, most near and dear, seems to shift every decade or so? Like discussion of health benefits of Atkins diets, grapefruit diets, etc. and like discussions of Mozart music for babies, or Kumon math drills, computer games, and Sesame Street like TV shows.
Things are always swinging back and forth, and I feel like people (including researchers like we talked about in class) tend to group themselves in near-fanatical camps. Why is there so little cohesion?
If academic experts (who for the most part in the US do not seem to have bilingual upbringings) are not able to make sense or come to a healthy holistic view of things, how on earth are policy makers, educators, families, and kids supposed to do it?
October 29, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Karen Graf
Caleb- your observation is interesting about how our focus as a society shifts so rapidly from what is healthy, educational, beneficial to our lives, etc. in a constant, ever-changing cycle. In reading the Baker (2009) book on raising bilingual children, the author stressed the importance of allowing an early bilingual/immersion program at least 4-5 years to flourish and to really allow children to develop linguistically and with regards to literacy in the two languages. It seems, however, that our society wants quick and instant results so bilingual programs sometimes are a tough sell even in the face of overwhelming evidence in regards to academic and coginitve benefits.
October 29, 2011 at 8:19 pm
Karen Graf
I am interested in early bilingual/dual immersion language programs where children become bilingual and biliterate in both their home(minority) language and the majority language. I am wondering about longitudinal studies that have shown the benefits to these children to be in classrooms where their home language is not only legitimized but appreciated as well. Specifically, I am wondering if there is evidence to show that the rates of school drop outs is lower and those going to college higher and can be contributed to this early bilingual approach to literacy and language learning.
October 30, 2011 at 8:26 pm
braddinardo
Karen, this is also an interesting topic for me too. I just read an article about the use of hybrid discourse in the classroom. In the study they found that student’s literacy skills improved over time when they were aloud to use their home language in the classroom. The study was conducted on elementary school students so it doesn’t mention anything regarding drop-out rates, but if you are interested, I can share the article with you.
October 30, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Karen Graf
Thank you- I would like to know the title/author of the study. I’ve never heard the term ‘hybrid discourse’ before so I’d like to look into it a little more.
October 30, 2011 at 12:51 am
Tiantian Guo
From this article, we can see that most of the parents, though they are well educated, seek advice on how to raise bilingual child from three main sources: public discource, private networks, and personal beliefs. As the ariticle said, up to 95% of the public resources are questionable in terms of their quality and accuracy. My question is that how can educators help parents to find good books or experts for parents to get advice from? Every school could found a organization for bilingualism where parents and children can get more accurate advice.
I think how to raise a bilingual child successfully is a case-by-case problem. Thus it is very difficult for educators or experts to give parents a general instruction. That makes bilingual education more difficult to be known well. What are we supposed to do? A lot of bilingual studies are still be unknown. I found myself couldn’t be very confident about many questions and doubts parents would have about blingual child.
What’s more, parents who are eager to raise a bilingual child are pursuing achievement and sense of success. Thus they usually have a high expectation for child. However, bilingual development often grow slow or varies much in speed between different children. Parents who don’t know bilingualism well will not promote bilingualism, or may hinder it. So what attitudes would be more perfect for parents to hold for bilingual development? When they have questions and doubts, where can they go for answers?
October 30, 2011 at 11:53 am
Wan-Chen Lee
After reading the journal article this week, I was not surprised at a current trend with a dramatic increase in the production of CDs, videos, flash cards and books geared at babies or toddlers because it is so simlar in Taiwan. Many parents want their chidlren to learn English as early as possilble, especially they would like to educate children to be “elite” class in Taipei. Also, when the author talked about some moms who recognized the bilingual parenting entailed often result in maternal guilt, stress and personal trauma. This actually happened to my mom because we don’t live in a urban area where information networks is richer. When I read about how the “good mother” identities of Japanese mothers were vunerable to unrelentling publisc advice and recommendations. I feel so bad about it. This paper examines how prents draw on a variety of sources, including popular literature, expert advice, friends and family members. I would like to talk about how much impact popular literature is and how correct information the popular literature is.
October 30, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Jialing Wang
After reading this week’s paper, I learned that parents raising bilingual children usually get support from three ways: personal experience, family support, and popular press. And it’s really glad to see more and more bilingual parents choose additive bilingualism to raise their children. And from previous papers, one parent one language seems to be the best family language policy in bilingual families, even though in this paper one mother said it’s impossible for her. I’m really curious about, as a linguist，how do you raise your bilingual child?
October 30, 2011 at 8:27 pm
braddinardo
I agree. Dr. Hasko, I think it would be really interesting for you to share with us your strategies for raising your child to be bilingual
October 30, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Hyun Hee Kim
Overall, the article was interesting because “Bilingual Parenting” was quite new topic that I explored. Although I read and thought about bilingualism as school policy and program aspects, I did not have chances to read about “parenting” and think about parents’ identity as “good parents.”
I had a few reflections and questions raised throughout the reading this week.
I. Participants
a. Main stream vs middle class?
i. Q: not mainstream. What do you mean by middle class?
the researchers chose 24 families who are “attempting to achieve additive Spanish-English bilingualism.” The fact that they chose the family who are attempting to achieve additive bilingualism made me, as a reader, question that whether the participants are “mainstream” or not. What do you mean by “mainstream”? What do you mean by “middle class” in the US? Does the author, whether directly or indirectly, assume that participants in this study are “not mainstream” meaning they are middle class? Does that mean that the parents are less educated ?
In this article, majority of the parents, (23 out of 24 and 19 out of 24) received 4 year college education. In addition, one of the participants, Janice, even received masters’ degree in Spanish Linguistics and found inspiration in a popular literature for bilingual parents. Her interview shows, in my opinion, that she is active, joining list serve, articulate and educated as a mother:
I joined a uhm listserv, bilingual family something or another, and reading the experience of those families uh there’s a book, raising Children Bilingual. I don’t remember. Harding is the, yeah, right, and I looked at those studies, and hum to see what made them successful. (p. 702)
Thus, I was quite surprised that I, as a reader, had feeling that the author was describing the participants as “not mainstream.” To me, they seemed to be very active and educated parents. When the author mentioned that the participants in middle class practiced “mainstream” practice, it sounded that parents in middle or low SES still practice what other high SES families practice for their children’s education. Is it? Or I do not have enough understanding of SES in the US.
II. Finding
Personal experience with language learning
Another interesting point in this article was one of the findings. One of the findings showed that parents trust their own personal experience with language learning. As a teacher, I was able to identify with their statements. Although teachers are trying to incorporate recent theory with practice in language teaching, they, including myself, find themselves repeating the same methodologies that they grew up with.
In addition, one of the participants, Amy, mentioned that OPOL is not working for them. Maybe, it is not working for her. She used the expressions, “too exhausting (p. 705).” In a away, it made sense she felt that way and it did not work in her particular family culture and setting. I’m curious whether OPOL is working or not in certain families. If it is, what does it look like?
III. Suggestion
I strongly agree with the statement, “these parents’ efforts could be better supported.” I think that parents, whether they are “mainstream” or not, they should have access to more reliable sources than internet or pop magazines.
Then, I would question how? In my opinion, academic research on bilingualism is very reliable sources compared to pop texts. But then, how could we link the theory and practice, since not all the parents have resources including financial security. In real life, free or cheap workshops or written sources should be available for the parents whether they are main stream or not.